The Race Against Time

As the struggle to increase state control over health care continues, it occurs to me that this is a race against time.

Sure, this is often been framed as a race against time, in the sense that Obama needs to spend his political capital as fast as he can before the impact of his actual actions (or inaction) start to deplete it.

But there's another race against time: The more time passes, the harder and harder it gets to pretend that "Well, Europe does this, and they're all just swell as can be!"

'cause, of course, they're not. Right now, Americans (on the whole) would not tolerate the sort of care that Canadians and British receive. The French system is supposedly top notch, but of course it's in the red to the tune about 10% of its total budget, can't be decreased, and so of course will only increase.

On top of that, you have the constant double-digit unemployment and the sometimes staggering poverty levels of western Europe.

Even the middle-class in, say, Scandinavian countries, which are often heralded as blissful blonde paradises, can't (for example) go to lunch routinely. It's a significant expense. Not surprising, when you consider how much a Big Mac costs. Not surprisingly, Sweden, Norway and Denmark are in the top 5 of the Big Mac Index.

I haven't been able to validate the $8.99 footlong sub at Subway, talked about in that PJTV video, but most things are taxed to death. I once sent a Dutch pal a $20 computer game because it was $70 in his country.

Last time we voted down government medicine was 15 years ago. And it was tabled for all that time, and all that time the countries that had government medicine have only gotten more in debt. 15 from now, some of them (at least) will be bankrupt, and that will be the least of their problems, one suspects.

So, if we can win this battle, that might end the argument for the century.

It'll come back, of course. Tyranny always comes back in one form or another. All we can do is fight it off every single time.

Eternal vigilance.